Folk Tale

The primary changes in this patch support the roll out of boss battles. During the implementation we’ve focused on Mossclaw and Bonefinger (see videos below). More boss battles will follow in future patches.

Player: Added Mossclaw abilities (slam, stomp, strangle, summon) and AI behaviourPlayer: Added Bonefinger abilities (acid breath, acid puke, slam, screech) and AI behaviourPlayer: Difficulty should now be more appropriate on normalPlayer: Doubled distance selected units can travel to engage in meleePlayer: Pathfinding is now immediate rather than having a 0.1-0.2s delay, commanding units more responsivePlayer: Cleared 'efficiency' field in the workers tab to reduce confusion (since it has not done anything for a long time)Player: Turning AutoAI off prevents heroes using special abilities and they’ll not aggressively engage in combatPlayer: Camera shake is now played at full strength if a large character causing it is on screen (e.g. Mossclaw)Player: Potion consumption action can now be key boundPlayer: Heroes: Ser Gregory: Added screenshake to some abilitiesEditor: Remapped 'move world down' to 'ctrl+shift+d' and now camera path points are moved tooAssets: Audio: Added Bonefinger soundsAssets: Audio: Added Mossclaw soundsAssets: Audio: Added Beastmen soundsAssets: Audio: Added swamp, glade and Bonefinger’s cave ambience soundsAssets: Audio: Added sack and spider den ‘death’ soundsAssets: Characters: Replaced Fenrin’s melee idle animation to fix glitchAssets: Characters: Replaced Fenrin’s knockdown/collapse animation to remove silly spinAssets: Characters: Updated Spriggan collapse animation with shorter versionAssets: Characters: Updated Urzal’s low magic spam attack animation so wand is parallel with ground ready for ammoAssets: Characters: Quixl: Added basic conversation animationAssets: Characters: Quixl: Added TNT plunger push animationAssets: Characters: Changed crypt beetles to explode when they dieAssets: Kits: Added Murp Dentistry PropsAssets: Kits: Terrains: GrasslandCaves: Added bubbling acid pools x 2 with sfxAssets: Loot: Added House Hraun cloth armor setAssets: Terrain: Grassland Caves: Added acid pool (for use in Bonefinger’s Lair map)Fix: Moving the whole world would move child world objects (e.g VS scripts) twice as muchFix: 4 bows weren’t working as intendedFix: Occasional exception caused in WorldText nodeFIx: Moving whole world up/down in Editor would move child objects (example script cogs) twice as muchFix: Quixl’s backstab can no longer be exploited to get around obstacles such as locked doorsFix: Removed last of old advisor sound files to prevent them being picked up by regex matchFix: Removed some minor per-frame memory allocationsFix: Improved Willow’s AI to prevent her healing units with full healthFix: Campaign: Exiting dungeon before Mordrich could walk to his lab could prevent story from continuingFix: Campaign: The Glade: Moved everything down to only more headroom for the cameraFix: Heroes: Ser Gregory’s taunt shield sound effect wasn’t playing

Known Issues

Heroes can sometimes become stuck (might be after revival) - if so, please save and reload

Villagers cannot be commanded to help with construction/repair

Brom, Lilith and Nara are all too easy

The Butcher protecting the Everbloom Antidote is too easy

The minimap markers on The Rotwold Fens quest aren’t showing

Repelling the Gladefolk can be a tough challenge

Developer Comments

This patch adds a powerful mathematical curve animation system to beef up the visual effects system that we use for special abilities. It’s first use can be seen on Mossclaw’s abilities such as stomp, when radial spokes of earth erupt outwards. We’ll be doing a lot more on special abilities in subsequent patches.

The character state machine has been rewritten to better support boss battles. While we aimed to restore many of the behaviors to what they were, players may spot very slight changes in character behavior. Please do let us know if you spot something strange that didn’t happen before that isn’t listed under known issues.

The primary changes are combat auto-balancing (monster levelling) and a new difficulty gameplay setting, hero AI so they use their abilities when not selected, and the addition of minimap location markers for all campaign quests.

We've confirmed that Sandbox is brutal (but not impossible) in this experimental patch following community feedback. We'll resolve this for the next patch, but for now you can turn down the difficulty level under gameplay settings.

Player: Added monster auto-levelling and challenge balancing; game is now harderPlayer: Added five levels of difficulty settings to the gameplay tab, defaulting to normalPlayer: Extremely basic hero AI has been enabled for non-selected heroes in the player’s partyPlayer: Reduced hero revive time in village maps to 30 secondsPlayer: Doubled health/power given by potionsPlayer: Added confirm button to the load saved game dialog and world map fast travel dialogPlayer: Spider waves are now disabled on easiest difficulty settingPlayer: Increased probability of woodcutters planting saplings, and introduced some randomness into which trees they choose to chop downPlayer: Added some basic damage/miss/critical text during combatPlayer: Rate of health recovery is determined somewhat by Vitality score; power recovery by Mind scorePlayer: Made villagers a little less squishy by doubling their healthPlayer: Non military villagers now flee when they or a nearby unit is attacked and they have less than 50% healthPlayer: Master volume now fades to 0 when the application loses focusPlayer: All needs are now disabled until the supply wagon has been builtMaps: Campaign: All: Added minimap location markers for all questsMaps: Campaign: Shirebrook: Added subquest to place the supply wagon and encourage foraging to help new playersMaps: Campaign: Shirebrook: Added lesser potion drops in crates and urnsMaps: Campaign: Shirebrook: Bandits no longer raid when repelling the undead or gladefolk wavesMaps: Campaign: Bandit Caves: Added option to recruit Quixl even if player initially declinesMaps: Campaign: Glade: Removed needless travel back to Nara after defeating LilithAssets: Audio: Added looping ambient sounds to machines in Mordrich’s FactoryAssets: Audio: Updated magic weapon impact soundsAssets: Audio: Added fuse and explosion soundsAssets: FX: Added explosion prefab that can be instantiated via workbench (used in Bountiful Bog map WIP)Assets: Characters: Beastmen: Updated great weapon collapse animationAssets: Characters: Beastmen: Updated dual wielding bullock to fix beltAssets: Characters: Grublins: Added Urzal (Grublin Boss) with basic animation setAssets: Characters: Grublins: Added ScruplezAssets: Characters: McDougal: Updated knockdown animationAssets: Characters: Ogres: Updated Murp mesh to fix gap above beltAssets: Characters: Ogres: Updated Ogre Zombie meshAssets: Characters: Toadkin: Added Blotch (Toadkin Ambassador)Assets: Characters: Toadkin: Added SageAssets: Kits: Props: Added faction crossbows (04-11)Assets: Kits: Fishing: Updated textures and propsAssets: Kits: Buildings: Goblin Village: Updated texturesAssets: Kits: Buildings: Construction overhauled with more modular piecesAssets: Kits: Traps: Moved Cage into it’s own kit to prevent pulling in other assetsAssets: Loot: Added Grublin chainmail armor setAssets: Loot: Added House Hraun chainmail armor setAssets: Loot: Added Withering Dead leather armor setEditor: Workbench: Added StatisticItem node to track how many resources are harvestedEditor: Workbench: Added SubQuestLocator and SubQuestLocatorMultiple nodesEditor: Workbench: Added ClearBuffs flag to OrderMove nodes, true by defaultEditor: Workbench: Removed 'pointInWorld' input from all quest nodesEditor: Workbench: Added IsAsset nodeFix: Fixed local rotations on levelup visual effectFix: Added WorldObject to DemolishEffect prefab so it can be instantiated via WorkbenchFix: FOW stopped working after the world map was loadedFix: Beastmen were visible in fog of warFix: Set default faction on some humans to be correctFix: Worked around Unity UI bug causing the 'Exit' button on the world map to be invisibleFix: Rows were being duplicated in marketplace UI when reloading the mapFix: Camera rotation could sometimes be restored incorrectlyFix: Kenny now attacks after the warning conversation dialogs completes and not beforeFix: Kenny failed to flee if he was stunned when his accomplices were defeatedFix: Some variables were not being cleared when loading locations; could cause minimap decals for completed quests to re-appear when portaling back into a mapFix: Reduced max distance from enemy to defeated hero to block revival of that heroFix: If players entered then immediately exited the Desecrated Cathedral, they couldn’t get back inFix: Destructible doors are now destroyed with one hit as intendedFix: Population wasn’t expanding in sandbox maps other than the starting mapFix: Camera is now hard-clamped at edge of map, and soft nudging turned offFix: Floating grass can sometimes be left over when portalling to a different map

Known Issues

Some Goblin buildings had incorrect pivots (especially the farm), and may need adjusting if level designers have used them in their maps

Scruplez and the Toadkin Sage aren’t fully implemented as they lack their ranged attack code. They have been added to facilitate the rollout of the next stage of the campaign

Developer Comments

Enemies now have their challenge level set when first emerging from the fog of war. It is now much more important to use hero abilities and potions. If it’s too difficulty, dropping the difficulty down from normal to easy will reduce the challenge level.

SubQuestLocator nodes in workbench are intended to update the position value on StartSubQuest nodes, and replace most cases where MinimapDecal nodes were previously used. Both the magnifying icon next to sub quests in the UI and the minimap decal are now set together. Please see the Shirebrook scripts for implementation examples.

As your heroes get higher, untrained military units that fail to keep up are going to become more squishy. It is therefore important to give these units combat experience to gain levels, craft better gear, and brew health potions at the Herbalist Den.

The construction kit pieces have been deprecated (still there but hidden so no existing maps break), and new modular building exterior pieces added that snap. Please see the tavern exterior in the sandbox Haven map for an example of how to use them.

Player: World fast travel is now enabled - when exiting a dungeon players are given the option of exiting to the connected map, or opening the world map to choose another location - designed to reduce travel times; please note the button on the top bar will be replacedPlayer: Sharpen graphics setting is now disabled on all but ultra and custom profilesCore: Tweaked audio system to make more advantage of Unity 5.x engineCore: All audio files moved out of StreamingAssets folder including voice filesMaps: Campaign: Bandit Caves: Simplified main path through to reduce chance of players getting lostMaps: Campaign: Bountiful Bog: Updated Grublin village and added Toadkin Palace (only accessible via Editor atm)Maps: Campaign: Bonefinger’s Lair: After defeating Bonefinger, fog of war is revealed around the portal into the desecrated cathedral so the player can see where to go when clicking the quest location hint next to the quest nameMaps: Campaign: Shirebrook: City Watch reinforcements now delayed by 60 secondsMaps: Campaign: Shirebrook: More quest location markers added to help guide playersMaps: Campaign: The Glade: Modified the city to reduce the windy roads and removed unnecessary doorsMaps: Campaign: The Glade: Added cutscene interlude to reveal corruption of Everbloom to provide contextAssets: Kits: Ice Palace: Detail textures updatedAssets: Kits: Ice Palace: Throne, more props addedAssets: Kits: Props/Kobold Props: Added palisade doorsAssets: Kits: Fishing: New kit added for docks, texturing is still WIP so has placeholdersAssets: Audio: Added spear and pitchfork impact sounds, updated frost magic and shockEditor: Workbench: Added MinimapDecal node to add/remove markers on minimap based on object’s positionEditor: Workbench: Added TrapGrid node (designed to be used with Spike trap)Editor: Workbench: Added RevealOnWorldMap nodeEditor: UI: Checkbox added to portal inspector to toggle whether world map travel option is presentedEditor: UI: Updated navmesh tool icon statesFix: Sometimes players couldn’t right click to equip items after a conversation with a reward had been visibleFix: Sounds using the 'Shuffle' play mode were only shuffled after all sounds in the group had been played onceFix: 'Affects navmesh' toggle wasn’t playing nicely with doors and similar objectsFix: Entering glade, exiting, then re-entering would spawn another Willow and SpiderFix: Willow and Lilith are now revived once their confrontation ends so they aren’t delivering dialogue standingFix: Fixed exception in Format nodeFix: Tutorial: Player couldn’t enter kobold mine until they pressed continue in the conversation dialogFix: Added missing minimap location marker referred to in TutorialFix: Numerous exceptions in edge cases ranging from combat, inventory to changing character factionsFix: Memory leak when villagers with procedurally generated meshes are destroyedFix: Player camera angle was changing after cutscenesFix: Resolved a number of campaign scripting loopholesFix: Some hero abilities had the wrong targets (e.g. Freya’s heal healing enemies)

Known Issues

When entering and exiting dungeons a lot, sometimes the fog of war will become impenetrable. To resolve this, please save your game, exit to the main menu, and load in the save. Please let us know in the forum if you experience this as we’ve not managed to recreate it during QA.

When entering Bonefinger’s Lair, sometimes grass from the previous map can be left over. It’s purely a visual glitch, and can be resolved for now by saving and loading.

Some minimap location markers are re-appearing after quests have been completed.

Developer Comments

We’ve moved the location of streaming audio assets which will make this patch larger than usual.

The primary changes are the ability to visualize the navmesh both in the Editor and in the player (very useful for level design), and the addition of the character activation animations system so that skeletons etc. can climb out of the ground when approached instead of standing around.

Player: Reduced health and power recovery per unit of time by 50%Player: Added tooltip messages when when trying to drag/drop inventory items in invalid waysPlayer: Disabled tooltip scaling effect as it was hard to read quickly and looks bad at lower FPSPlayer: Console: Added ‘navmesh’ command to toggle navmesh visualization on/offEditor: Added navmesh visualization for level designers (3-state button added to toolbar)Editor: Added activations system (see Skeletons to begin with)Editor: Workbench: Added SetNameOf node to set character namesEditor: Workbench: Quest giver nodes now have an option to show a minimap blip and an arrowAssets: Fixed Axe11 having a huge offset from its pivot pointAssets: Kits: Ice Palace enhancementsAssets: Kits: Human Interior enhancementsAssets: Audio: Updated Axe, Claw, Club, Hammer, Mace impact soundsAssets: Animations: Added/Updated skeleton activation animationsMaps: Campaign: The Glade: Cleansing The Glade merged into The Girl In The Glade questMaps: Campaign: Bonefinger’s Lair: Added some skeleton activation animationsMaps: Campaign: Sandal Factory: Added some skeleton activation animations in one roomMaps: Campaign: Stinking Swamp: Goblin Village added (map is WIP and only accessible via Editor)Fix: Character inventories were breaking after trying to move items between different spots on the character sheetFix: When searching for the Rotwold Antidote, if players entered and exited Bonefinger’s lair, they couldn’t get back inFix: Two chairs and a rug are hovering by a fireplace in the Drunken Hog tavern mapFix: Faction storylines no longer overlap; entering either faction dungeon will ally the player with themFix: The sprinklers in The Glade now only highlight when on the relevant Withering Dead questFix: It is no longer possible to enter the Bandit Caves until after Kenny’s returnFix: It is no longer possible to enter the Glade without first completing the Bandit CavesFix: It is no longer possible to enter the Desecrated Cathedral without first completing the Bandit CavesFix: Added Cloth Armor to some occupations that could previously not equip itFix: Fixed happiness being set to +100 in rare circumstances (e.g when no villagers were in a world when it loaded)Fix: Corrected a typo when repelling the gladefolk that said ‘Repel The Undead’Fix: Party wasn’t standing in front of Mordrich at the conclusion of the Withering Dead campaignFix: Peasants no longer deliver more farmed goods than farmersFix: Game state now saved to ‘Auto Save’ when portalling between maps instead of creating separate save gamesFix: Various bugs with navmesh additions relating to scaling and rotation (affects level designers)Fix: Items that are normally hidden are now visible as conversation rewards (e.g. crafting recipes)Fix: AddAttributePoints node now makes sure health/power percentages are as large as beforeFix: Conversation nodes now always use the name and portrait from the character input if setFix: Stopped grass moving around significantly when the navmesh changes (e.g. when a building is placed)

Developer Comments

When viewing the navmesh in the editor, it might not always be up to date. Moving an object with a navmesh cut on it will force an update. Alternatively, save and reload the level. Where the navmesh appears to be more opaque, this usually means you have overlapping navmeshes which is bad and can lead to pathfinding issues.

When using the activation animations system, currently only the Skeleton prefabs in the Withering Dead character kit have animations, and the kobolds. We’ll be adding more in coming patches.

Player: Sandbox world is now interconnected allowing travel to other maps via road sign portalsPlayer: Increased power cost and cooldown time of Quixl’s shuriken throw and backstab abilitiesPlayer: Hero health bars are now visible (at low alpha) when in combat even if they are not selectedPlayer: Users can no longer leave weapon or shield slots empty in a hero's inventoryPlayer: When hovering over buildings under construction with peasants selected the 'repair' cursor is now used instead of the default onePlayer: Reduced the overall amount of loot that drops in crates, barrels and chestsMaps: Sandbox: Grassland: Renamed to HavenMaps: Sandbox: Haven: Added Drunken Hog Tavern (dungeon WIP)Maps: Sandbox: Swamp: Added Bla’tu’s Temple (dungeon WIP)Maps: Sandbox: Swamp: Fixed characters being able to walk under temple where the zig-zag steps areMaps: Sandbox: Swamp: Environment detail passMaps: Sandbox: Howling Tundra: Renamed to Cold PeakMaps: Sandbox: Cold Peak: Added Spirefrost (dungeon WIP)Maps: Tutorial: Fixed not being able to re-enter mine after exiting immediately after enteringEditor: Tile and prop locking is now saved between sessionsEditor: Painting no longer requires pressing the U key (instead selection is disabled while the paint tool is active)Editor: Editor inspector is now cleared when objects are deletedWorkbench: Added highlightWhenDisabled to WorkPointTrigger nodeWorkbench: Added BuildingTier nodeWorkbench: Added Invulnerable nodeWorkbench: Added QuestDeadline. Added support for optional quests. Quests can no longer be restartedWorkbench: Nodes can now have variable width (improved layout)Workbench: Fixed sound searching in workbench including a bunch of empty items. Improved searching accuracy slightlyWorkbench: Tweaked behaviour of VSMoveCameraAssets: Kits: Props: Updated spear meshes and colliders - level designers check in your scenesAssets: Kits: Construction: Added door portalAssets: Kits: Human Interior: Added more pieces including doors and portalAssets: Kits: Props/Food: AddedAssets: Kits: Props/Sacks: AddedFix: Older key binding files were throwing exceptionsFix: Abilities that required a direction would sometimes fail when the character was standing in a slopeFix: Fleeing only worked if the characters were dead instead of the other way aroundFix: Camera orbit point would sometimes not be updated when the camera was rotatedFix: Minimap blips were appearing for CharacterEffectHolder instances (e.g Lilith's disease cloud)Fix: Changed tooltip for training a blacksmith from 'Train Miner' to 'Train Blacksmith'Fix: Resources consumed by buildings only start consumption once construction is completed e.g. cottages consuming firewoodFix: Tweaked when camera position is set when loading a location to make sure it is set before workbench scripts are startedFix: Changed shader on goblin warship to fix transparency not workingFix: Yeti’s collider wasn’t correctly configured. Increased combat rangeFix: Special abilities such as shield bash no longer affect non-enemiesFix: Negative buffs as well as damage over time is now cleared when teleporting to a new locationFix: Reduced intensity of hover light on the road sign portalFix: Mayor Pootenberry’s name was showing as ‘Advisor’ in the campaign conversation UIFix: Kenny could sometimes glide when he fled if he was defeatedFix: Goblin ambush in sandbox swampFix: Navmesh issue in goblin village in sandbox stinking swamp map near green crystalFix: Navmesh cut added to barrels near kobold mine in sandbox haven mapFix: Classic Dungeon FloorTile2x2 03 missing navmesh and/or colliderFix: SetLoot node didn't trigger the 'done' event